Iowa City Council needs to maintain progressive majority

Now that early voting has started for the Iowa City Council races, I want to share a few thoughts on the three candidates I support: Ryan Hall in District B, and Mazahir Salih and Kingsley Botchway II in the at-large race. With the election of Hall, Salih and Botchway, we have a better chance to extend the current effective leadership over the next several years. Let's keep and extend our truly progressive majority.

Each of these people is activists. When activists are elected, the process of local government changes. There is more targeted outreach and more grassroots communication. This change in process can lead to changes in outcome, as historically disenfranchised groups will have more seats around the table. This may indeed be scary for those traditionally holding power. It is a continued change that is needed, necessary, and helpful toward our community being more welcoming, exciting, growing and representing a broader set of constituencies.

Ryan Hall is someone I closely relate to: He is a democratic socialist, lives in River City Housing Collective, currently serving as president and is a nontraditional student in environmental planning. I shared many of these life attributes with him when I first ran. He has a great deal of experience working for communities living in poverty, studying and working for a more sustainable way to build communities, and even wildfire firefighting. His core values are strong toward racial and socio-economic equity, environmental responsibility, public process, and sustainable economic development strategies. He is the progressive in this race! He is the type of young leadership I want to be supporting, just as many of you supported me when I began running in 1985.

Some will say he doesn’t have the life experience to warrant a vote. I disagree. If only I had been as smart, savvy and articulate as Ryan Hall. As an example of his reasoned and value-based approach, he is very interested in Sunday bus service. He knows the public transit budget and the process of collaborating across jurisdictional lines is complicated. That is why he is interested in investigating this issue in a concerted way, suggesting that a pilot program with service and economic metrics be explored.

Mazahir Salih has a proven track record of community leadership. Her work on the board of the Center for Worker Justice and the city's Community Police Review Board show a great balance and success in working inside and outside of the system. This is effectively shown in her work to bring the developers and residents of the Forest View area together when things were quite tense and the gap between the groups large. She helped bring both sides together for conversation. The result is a strong and responsible development proposal. To have such a positive and productive activist on the city council will add to the strong majority currently on board.

Kingsley Botchway is solid on the issues of affordable housing and racial equity. Bringing targeted public involvement to economic development by investing in women and minority-owned startups is a top priority for Kingsley. He has been willing to reach out to groups such as the Black Voices Project, hear their criticism, to make the adjustments he feels are appropriate and come back to hear these voices again. He deserves to be re-elected.

There are a variety of issues surrounding density and economic development we need to have broader community discussions around. I believe most people in our community are welcoming of higher-density development in the core of our city. The discussion that hasn’t taken place more thoroughly is what degree of density is acceptable. A seven-story building in downtown Iowa City is more than twice the average density in the area. Some want 20 stories, others are somewhere in between. Then there is the issue of what kind of public assistance will be offered under what conditions. For example, I might be fine with a bit more density depending where on the block the lot is located, the design (which impacts the development’s effect on the streetscape — does is keep it warm and friendly or does is go to the cool side?), historic preservation ideals and affordable housing units.

I believe Botchway, Salih and Hall are up for the challenges these issues pose to the community — both with good process and reasonable outcome. Please give your votes to these three candidates. They bring much to the table.

Karen Kubby is a member of the Press-Citizen Writer’s Group and co-owns a family business in downtown Iowa City.